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Sheila Crane, Oued Ouchayah as Transect and the Fractal Geometries of autogestion, French Studies, Volume 78, Issue 4, October 2024, Pages 660–678, https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knae145
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In 1974, Alain Médam published an essay entitled ‘Oued Ouchayah (Banlieue d’Alger)’ in Espaces et sociétés, a journal that had been launched four years earlier by a multidisciplinary group including Henri Lefebvre and Anatole Kopp.1 In it, Médam reflected on his participation, over a decade earlier, in what he described as ‘l’expérience singulière’ undertaken in Oued Ouchayah, the site of a sprawling bidonville on the outskirts of Algiers.2 Médam offered his wide-ranging, retrospective analysis of a project that had unfolded in the months after Algeria’s official claiming of independence in July 1962. Located in a district that had grown precipitously during the Algerian War of Independence, this endeavour set out to expand employment opportunities while simultaneously providing improved housing for residents. In Médam’s view, the short-lived and experimental project was worth revisiting as a remarkable ‘essai de socialisme essayant d’être autogestionnaire’.3 For him, it raised compelling questions about the potentials and paradoxes inherent in an urban-planning project whose aim was the radical decentring of expertise.
